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  “Fuck. My sweet pet. So perfect.”

  Her world tilted. Her mind spun. His swirling, sweeping touch was magic on her enflamed backside before teasing into the valley between her thighs with his long, sure fingers. She rolled her hips, needing him deeper, harder. Her throat convulsed and let out a catlike cry as she struggled to hold her pleas in check.

  “Fuck!”

  After he growled it, the air was torn with the scrape of his zipper coming down.

  “I’m nearly exploding, Rose.”

  He groaned again. The sound layered over a discernible crinkle of foil—and then his thighs were pressing against hers and his steel-hard, latex-covered shaft parted her from behind.

  “I’m going to fuck you like this, honey. Dig in and hang on, because I’m going to give you more of what you need, I promise. Prepare your pussy. And your ass.”

  He was a man of his word. The moment the head of his cock connected to the depths of her sex, he squeezed her right ass cheek and then smacked it, solid and swift. With his left hand, he gave alternate strokes to the other cheek. It was agony, glory, sanity, and senselessness all at once, and she never wanted it to end. Clear thought? Forget it. Her body was in command now. No. He was in command now. He filled her. Consumed her. As his cock conquered her from the inside, his touch overpowered her from the outside. He was everywhere, bringing the intensity, the fever, the more for which she’d yearned her whole life. The experience she’d given up on ever having. The man she never thought she’d find. Who knew that flying to an island would really bring her an unexpected treasure?

  Her world became a blissful mist as his thrusts took over her body. God, how she prayed the nirvana would last forever. The storm would rage on, the clock would stand still, the world would be simply this. Every cell in her body opened for him. Reached for him. Convulsed on waves that intensified with each passing second. Mindless sounds spilled from her lips as the sensations crashed in, faster and faster, falling on her like pulsing, pounding rain. And the storm kept flooding, slamming at the dam between sanity and mindlessness.

  It wasn’t long before fissures grew in that dam, wider and wider, promising to burst her open. She panted with need for it. She was going to burst. She was going to—

  “Not yet, Rose. Hold it back. Let it grow a little more.”

  Was he kidding? “C-Can’t! Too much! So…much!”

  “Yes, you can. Not. Yet.”

  “Please!”

  He spanked her with fierce, passionate force. “You’re mine tonight. Your body is mine. Your orgasm is mine. Hold it back, damn it.”

  “Shit!” She gripped the bedcover so hard, she wondered why the thing wasn’t in shreds. “I hate you.”

  “I adore you.” He relented his hold on her thighs, scraping forward to clutch her waist, forcing her body back onto his like they were gears on a locomotive. “Christ. I love fucking you.”

  The cracks in her composure split even more. “Please,” she cried. “Oh please, Sir. I need to—”

  “Yes.” Finally the word she craved, needed. “Yes, honey. Come now. Come for me good!”

  Good was just the beginning of what her detonation felt like. Amazing barely did it justice. If her brain was still functioning, it might’ve seized something like volcanic. She was a shifted landscape, an opened vista, the terrain of her psyche heaved up and turned into something new as she dissolved into raw sensation, pure light, magnificent heat, convulsing pleasure. She was exposed to him in ways having nothing to do with surrendering her body. This was about more, in so many precious ways. He’d known that. Oh God, how he’d known.

  The sobs came again, taking over as he halted at the apex of a thrust. He shuddered. His cock tightened. He erupted hard and deep inside her. She felt the heat of his seed even through the latex sheath.

  “Rose! Yes!”

  It was the last thing he said for many long minutes. He drove into her with insatiable, athletic grace. She dissolved even more, yearning for the mist of mindlessness to go on forever…at the same time, bracing herself for the moment it didn’t.

  That instant came faster than she expected. And ten times worse than what she’d prepared for.

  If her mind tumbled over a cliff before, it careened into a pit now. Everything was black, without direction, a no-man’s land between the beauty of what they’d just shared and the confusion of why she saw it that way. What had she just done? What had she allowed him to do? And worse, why did it turn her inside out like nothing before, made her feel alive, afire, and perfect for the first time in her life?

  Worst of all, how would she face a future of never knowing it again?

  The truth plunged her deeper into the blackness.

  Her sobs careened into nonstop weeping.

  It took Mark less than a minute to pull out and lie down next to her. He reached for her with one hand while getting rid of the condom with his other. When that was done, he rolled to his back, his body coated in a sheen that looked too damn gorgeous for sweat, and then pulled her atop him. Rose burrowed close despite how a voice screamed from inside, telling her to get as far away as the bed allowed.

  She needed to raise the shields again. She needed to start now. She had to chase down the emotional sentry who’d gone running with Mark’s sensual invasion, sitting back to watch the show with amusement while her body and mind surrendered to his rule. If she got everything back in place now, maybe the damage to her composure could still be saved a little.

  She wasn’t fast enough. The shivers began anew. Every muscle in her body fell into paralysis. Mark stroked her temple, scraping back her hair with nurturing motions that tore open her emotional floodgates again. Within a few minutes, she’d soaked his chest with her salty storm.

  “Crap.” She finally raised her head and sniffled. “I’m a mess.”

  “You’re supposed to be.” He tucked her head back into his shoulder. “It’s your first sub drop, honey.”

  She frowned. “Sub what?”

  “Sub drop,” he repeated. “Kink shorthand for a real biological sequence. Your body and your mind have been on high steam for over an hour. And after the release valve finally got punched…” His tone warmed with the innuendo. “Well, there was nowhere for you to go but down.”

  “Hm.” The explanation made complete sense. But it didn’t make the plummet any easier to endure. She closed her eyes in bliss as he started the finger-combing treatment again.

  “Many submissives don’t ever get used to it,” he continued. “And if you don’t either, that’s okay too. We’ll just make sure you’re in a comfy place to fall every time.”

  His hand never stopped, but Rose’s breathing hitched. There he went again, using those kinds of phrases. Stacking words and tones into a mental bridge that led to tomorrow, to the next day, to the next week, and beyond.

  Weeks and months and tomorrows that could never be.

  They’d be more than half a world apart by this time next month—but that was just the start of the problems. They already lived in different universes, and nothing would change that. He needed a woman to fly in the stars of his realm. He needed a companion who knew what do at his side in public as well as at his feet in private. Most of all, he deserved a woman who could give him her heart and soul as well as her body.

  But wasn’t that what you just did, Ro?

  She trembled harder, as the answer to that resonated through her.

  Yes, damn it. Yes. And it was the best experience of your life.

  It was also the last time she’d let it happen. The last time either of them could let it happen.

  Surely Mark saw that too. He wasn’t a stupid man. But he was also a determined, exasperating dreamer. His idealism was one of the most famous traits of his character. Until now, she’d always thought the media had just blown it out of proportion. Now she realized their accounts might have been exercising restraint.

  A sigh spilled from her.

  Mark’s hand stilled against her head. “Wh
at is it, honey?”

  She gazed at her fingers, lightly resting against his pec. “Please stop doing that.” Before he could get in a note of protest, she went on. “You know what I’m talking about. We can’t think about every time between us. There shouldn’t have been a this time.” She nuzzled his skin, breathing in the wild, masculine scent of him. “But I’m glad there was. Thank you.”

  His tense silence was broken only by the pattering rain. Finally he said, in a tight-teethed mutter, “We’re not going to talk about this right now.”

  “That won’t make it go away, Mark. Or our lives, or what—”

  “Go to sleep, Rose.”

  “But you’re just shoving it under the rug, damn it, and—”

  “Go to sleep, Rose.”

  She turned the sigh into a huff. But after that, she said nothing. Weariness became a heavier blanket by the second, and morning was coming, as it always did.

  In the light of day, he’d have to look at things differently. In a few hours, the world would be real again. Until then, she’d let herself believe his fantasy. A little while longer wouldn’t hurt. She’d let herself be the transformed cinder girl and linger at the ball just a few minutes more—especially because this dance wasn’t going to end with a glass slipper and carriage ride back to the palace.

  After tonight, she had the rest of her life to remember that sometimes, pumpkins just had to remain pumpkins. It wasn’t physically possible to turn them into princesses, and making them into pie only meant the prince ate them up before he decided they weren’t the right flavor after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  The exhaustion of the sub drop claimed her within minutes. She didn’t even rouse when Mark slipped from bed to grab a washcloth, soak it with cold water, and press it to the light welts he’d left on her ass. He cursed himself for not being more prepared with at least a cream for her skin, but that also had him admitting he’d never expected things to go as far as they had. He’d known he wanted to take her, to be inside her, to command her in every way he could, but he would’ve banked on a snowstorm hitting the island before predicting how deeply Rose would surrender to his hand…or how gorgeous she’d be in doing so.

  How fully she’d blossom.

  How completely she’d embrace it all.

  How beautiful she’d be…in her submissiveness.

  But she still didn’t get it.

  She’d ditched every lesson she’d just learned. She still thought this was a part of herself to be filed away like last year’s tax return, not a vital element she’d never be able to forget again.

  Foolish, frightened, stubborn…incredible…woman.

  The litany rolled through his head, which now rested on the pillow next to hers. She was still lost to slumber, mahogany lashes fanned against her creamy skin, tangled hair dappled in the silver of the dawn. He swallowed as quietly as he could, studying her face, which seemed carefully composed even in her dreams. If she allowed herself to dream.

  She challenged him in ways he’d never expected.

  And she was worth every exasperating moment.

  Rose sighed and stirred.

  He smiled tenderly as his subbie stretched like a cat, throwing her arms over her head. The action tugged the covers off her chest, giving him an eyeful of her generous swells. His mouth literally watered as he took in the dusky areolae with their prizes so pert in the centers. He longed to lean over and coax both nipples into submission, but he held back. He figured once the air hit her bare skin, she’d—

  “Shit!”

  Bolt up and gape at him like that.

  He bent an elbow and rested his head on his hand. If he didn’t smile too broadly, maybe she’d keep neglecting to take the sheet with her. “Hi.”

  “Uh, hi.”

  Damn. She remembered. Dragged up the sheet, tugging her knees up too. With her free hand, she scraped back her hair. “I forgot where I was.”

  “You weren’t looking too upset about it, sleeping beauty.” At her humorless laugh, he probed, “What?”

  She shook her head, seeming nervous. “Last night before I fell asleep, I was actually thinking—well, feeling—more like Cinderella.”

  Most women invoked that fairy tale with breathless glee. Instead, the sad threads in her tone made his chest tighten. “Sooty Cinderella or sparkling Cinderella?”

  “A little of each, I guess. Loving the sparkle but knowing I’d have to wake up soon.”

  He’d expected that. But that didn’t make it less maddening to hear. “No.” He hooked a hand into the crook of her elbow, gripping harder when she tried to pull away. “Damn it, Rose. You are awake.”

  At last she looked at him. Her stare burned with a thousand questions but, most importantly, a little hope.

  “Yes,” he repeated. “Don’t you see? For the first time in your life, you’ve accepted who you are. Submitting to me didn’t make you weaker, honey. It gave you back your strength.” He lifted his hand to her face, palming her jaw. “And it gave me back mine too. And I’m so thankful.”

  Her skin trembled beneath his touch. Her features contorted as if a boulder had landed on her shoulders. He watched every inch of her conflict, of the crossroads at which she stood. The safe comfort of yesterday’s Rose, or the exhilarating terror of today’s Rose?

  Damn it. He refused to let her revert to the cinders. The past wasn’t an option—for either of them.

  “Mark,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “Rosalind.” He flattened her torso against the fabric headboard. With the motion, he also rolled to crouch in front of her, cupping her cheeks. “Choose the strength. Choose this. Choose how good this can be.”

  Her gaze searched into him, big and vulnerable. But in those velvet depths, little rips of hesitation showed. Behind those rips, there was light…more glimmers…a little more anticipation.

  She swallowed.

  He held his breath.

  Her chin quavered. But then she gave him a rasp that spun his hope into euphoria. “I can’t!”

  “You can.”

  “Help me. No, make me. Please…”

  It was all he needed to hear. He mashed his mouth to hers, not using a shred of gentleness about it. He sucked in her sweet taste, rejoicing in her plaintive mewl, hardening at her aroused shudder. Fuck yes. This was so right, and every cell in his being confirmed it. He stabbed his tongue to hers again and again, marveling at how she synched herself with his rhythm, at how perfect her hands felt around his neck, clawing his scalp. Heat thickened the air between them, turning the bunched sheets into an infuriating barrier. Like a man with a fever, Mark ripped them away. Not a far-flung comparison. Rose Fabian had infected his blood like a jungle virus, and he never wanted an antidote.

  He dipped both hands between her thighs, parting them with one shove. Rose gasped, her tongue slipping along her bottom lip. In an instant he envisioned the length of his cock sliding into her berry-colored mouth. It turned his next words from a firm command into a raw growl.

  “I’m not taking my time with this, honey. Listen close. The safe word is worth. Use it if you need to, but only if you need to. You’ve turned your will over to me. I won’t abuse that, but I will push it. You need to be willing. And if you’re willing, then you’ll be obedient. Do you understand?”

  He was mesmerized with how that affected her. The increased surges of her breath. The slight tilt of her head, leaning toward him, as if hungering for him.

  “Yes,” she finally blurted. “Yes, Sir, I understand.”

  He pushed forward to kiss her again. “Good girl.”

  A smile curved her lips. He took one second to bask in the adoring look before he swung off the bed, moving across the room with military efficiency.

  “Sir? Wh-Where—”

  “Questions will be kept to a minimum, Rose.”

  He kept his voice at a firm directive. A glance back showed him her reactions. Her hips writhed. Her gaze darkened. Her nipples were stiff points of attention. Qui
ckly he moved to the gift basket GRI had sent to the suite. Damn thing could’ve carried Moses and a dozen cousins up the Nile. There was an equally large raffia bow on top of the package. He pulled the decoration apart until he’d unraveled the strong ribbon into two long lengths. A plan unfurled in his mind, filled with ruthless sensual intent.

  He tilted a calculating grin at her. “You asked me to make you choose. Now trust that’s what I’m going to do and don’t doubt the process.”

  He scooped his necktie off the floor as he returned to the bed and then slid back to the mattress as he had last night. He balanced high on his knees, staring down at her flushed beauty. Her skin was cream and softness against the sheets. Her hair, rich and russet, tumbled against the headboard and around her shoulders. Her fathomless, long-lashed gaze never left him. Still he asked her, “Do you trust me, pet?”

  Rose nodded slowly. “Y-Yes.”

  “It pleases me to hear that.” He let her see his approving nod. “In that case, spread your legs wider for me.”

  She was a little shaky in her compliance. He clenched his jaw, struggling to forget the fresh rush of blood to his cock.

  “Now move your wrists to the outsides of your knees.” Hell. His erection jutted in front of him, prominent as Pinocchio’s nose. “Perfect, honey. That’s so damn perfect.”

  Without another word, he came forward to fasten her forearms to her lower thighs, twisting the raffia in a modified gauntlet pattern. The work was as gorgeous as it was practical. The knots were lined up in two neat rows but could be unraveled with one pull at the bows he secured at her wrists.

  As he created the bonds, Mark’s mind stepped into a place it hadn’t been in years: a sacred corridor traversed only by Dom and sub together, tying up more than just body parts. A place where their breathing aligned and their awareness tunneled, where their heartbeats sought each other and the rest of the world got bound away as tightly as they were bound in. He truly never thought he’d know this precious silence again. Never thought he’d be using his strongest self-control techniques to keep an erection in check as he checked knots or be so focused on the answering signals from his submissive’s body in return, tuning his senses so completely to her that he could take her pulse almost by looking at her.